A little background. There are MAJOR heated discussion going on in the Greensboro/High Point area of NC about the proposed FedEx hub. Basically most of Greensboro and High Point support the Hub. But the High Point city council does not support it. The GSO airport is directly North of high point and directly west of Greensboro. The opposing arguments come from Greensboro residents that live within 3 miles of the airport and come from High Point residents on the North side of High Point. Most jets taking off from GSO fly directly over High Point.

So anyway, I am writing letters to the editors of the newspaper trying to convince people that this won't negatively hurt the area. Most people are complaining that this will only bring Blue Collar jjobs into the area, and will hurt airport because of freight traffic by reducing the number of passenger flights.

So what are some new arguemnts I can make. I've already argued that L10-11s of Tradewinds and A300s and 727s of FedEx and UPS and Airbone Express 707s fly there at night, and no one complains. So I am trying to come up with some new arguments.

To me, any company bringing new jobs into an area where loads of people are laying off would be a good thing on top of construction jobs of moving the roads and building the FedEx terminal and the new 3rd runway. But maybe I am biased by being an airline fan.

If you mention that ABX flys 707s into GSO your credibilty shall surely suffer. ABX flies DC-8s into GSO.
However
Point 1. GSO is nowhere near capacity. Unless FedEx is going to move it's MEM hub, they will not add many flights.
Point 2. FedEx aircraft leave hubs in the wee hours of the morning. Not many Passenger carriers leave GSO between 0100-0300 I bet.
Point 3. Blue color jobs? What a bunch of idiots. Do they prefer their slave labor to come from far away to clean their houses and cook their meals. Most of the jobs will go to college students, and others who prefer a fair paying part time job. Add to this mix the fact that pilots usually prefer to live where they are based. A small hub of 50 flights a day, 2.1736 crew per aircraft and probably 3 crews per flight means a fair number of well paid proffessionals moving to the area. The numbers are just an educated guess but I'll bet I'm not far off.

If the Greensboro area can afford to say no to this situation, good for them. Just tell them their reasoning is rather flawed.

Eminent Domain maybe. But you're never going to sway NIMBYs with logical arguments. These NIMBYs ( the white-collar "beautiful people I presume ) who oppose this: Do they live in relatively new developments, that is to say, AFTER the airport was there? I don't know that eminent domain argument would work on well-heeled people very used to getting their way. I've read of cases where people in new housing developments built adjacent to railroad tracks were against proposals to institute commuter rail, or even the freight railroad's increasing traffic- on their own railroad- the tracks of which were in place since the late 1800's: They don't want tracks in their backyards ( or jet aircraft over their homes ) and that's that!

GSO expanded and built the news passenger terminal in 1983 I think. Bank when Wrangler Aviation had the huge Canadair cargo flights there, before the switch to the a300s and the L10-11 of Tradewinds.

Anyhow. Back then, all that was around the airport was farms and a small development of houses around the Guilford College area of Greensboro. Soon after, in the mid to late 80s, High Point expanded North and Greensboro West, towards the airport. Built subdivisions, and apartment complexes. And what is messed up, is they are STILL building apartments right under the usual landing path of freight and cargo ops into the airport. So YES, it is a bunch of people who got a good deal on property and housing because it is near the airport, and its mainly. When simple research could have prevented such bad decisions. And it seems to be bad planning on the Plannign boards of both cities that allowed this to happen.

And the people who live nearest the airport complain the loudest about property values. Funny thing is, property in close proximity to an airport tends to be valued higher than comparable homes farther away.

I lived in Greensboro till 1998 and have seen this fight first hand. Its pretty rediculus...

I wrote a letter about it to the News&Record (thats what Greensboro's paper was called, right?) a few years ago outlining the positives and negatives about it and overall how it would benefit us all.

Well, people against it (ie: residents of "The Cardinal") wrote in flaming FedEx for flooding the media with propaganda. Apparently they thought I was working for FedEx or something trying to put them in such a good light that no ordinary citizen would do...boy were they confused.

I'll try to find it for you, but I doubt it will do much good, those people are unrelenting, and they've made their mind up that FedEx and the Greensboro airport are representations of Satan on earth.

As for the question of the FedEx operations there. It is suppoed to take the slack from both Memphis and Indianapolis for the flights up and down the east coast.

FedEx has also stated that the airport will be home for all the Overseas travel to Europe (ie, their a380 fleet that they are supposed to buy will be based there). FedEx has stated that they plan to buy 17 of these before 2007.

I just wrote a letter to the High point enterprise that is running tomorrow (Tuesday) and I'll rework it to fit the greensboro paper soon.

It's sad taht a couple of thousand people ruin something that could benefit the other 1.4 million people that live in the area.....

Everyone should know that I am only a 26 year old, I've stated it time and again in my letters. And my letters constantly upset the residents that don't want the hub. The problem is (and city leaders need to realize this) is that most people don't care if it comes or not because it won't affect them. So the only ones vocal are the opponets.

I expect those spoiled white collar NIMBYs will be taking the FAA's proposal to court soon. There is another public meeting coming up soon.

I haved lived very close to the flight path for Boeing Field for 3 years. In fact when UPS and Airborne Express planes take off in the evening they will fly directly over my place.

Now that Airborne has stopped flying DC8's I don't even notice the planes overhead unless I am outdoors at the time they depart. There are several departures between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m., as far as I know, the planes used are 767's, A300's and 757's. All of these are extremely quiet planes.

There is considerably more noise from small private jets with low bypass tubojets departing and landing at the airport. If you really want to cut noise down at airports, the older jets are the real culprit.

It is hard to convince people of this but the letter to the editor does a good job of pointing out the particular models which make the most noise. This may get people more focused on the issues and keep knee-jerk reactions to a minimum.